Saturday, August 20, 2011

SOLI performs the World Premiere of Overland Dream in Arlington, Texas

SOLI with Peter Lieuwen after the Premiere

SOLI has been busy this summer! After our tremendously successful 2010-11 Season, we drove to Arlington, Texas to perform the World Premiere of Peter Lieuwen’s Overland Dream at the Texas Music Teacher’s Association conference.

And the performance was a great success!

Peter was selected for the conference’s annual composition prize out of a large pool of talented Texas based composers. We were fortunate to be approached by Peter about this commission last year. He was inspired to use this commission award to write a work for SOLI after hearing the ensemble play another work of his at our TEXAS concert in May 2010.

We worked with Peter for an hour the morning of the performance. And this was the first time Peter had ever heard us play the piece live! There is always a journey to be taken when a new piece is conceived and when we start working on it, both for the Composer and for us. Everyone starts hearing different things as the piece develops through rehearsals and discussions that there is almost always a growing process. Things can be added, edited and sometimes parts of the music can even be taken out completely! We were so happy and frankly relieved when Peter looked up from the score at the end of his first hearing with a big smile on his face! We are always so happy to hear when a Composer is happy with the initial work we have done and that we were able to get close to what they had in mind. But it is also a testament to how well the piece is written in the first place and Overland Dream is just that, a beautiful, well-written work which we enjoy performing a whole lot. This year Overland Dream will compete with entries from all the other state affiliates, and if chosen, SOLI will perform the work at the national conference of Music Teachers National Association in New York City this coming spring!

In November our San Antonio audiences will get to hear Overland Dream on our 2011-12 season opening concert, and we are already making plans with Peter to record the piece this coming fall. We’ll keep you posted.

Here is the link to the premiere performance of Overland Dream. Click hereWe hope you enjoy this wonderful piece as much as we do. Thanks Peter!